O'er Thy Heart Swift Lights and Shadows Pass
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: Drabbles from Carlisle's time with the Volturi.
1. ebony beauty, passed this shade

**Notes: **Written for a challenge to Stephanie, who claimed Aro/Carlisle could never have realistically existed even for seconds. She should have known better than to thrown down such a gauntlet. This will end up being a collection of Volterra drabbles, related and not. Still in the works.

* * *

**Chapter 1: **

**ebony beauty, passed this shade **

Carlisle's name preceded him.

Announced through thick ornate, double doors as though to Phillip or William's court. Presented in name from one side and then directed to walk with his presenter, down a causeway lined by a crowd of immaculately attired people he would have assumed belonged in such a place, were it not for the endless row of gleaming embered eyes.

The room was marble, floor to ceiling, with wide columns, intricate architecture and inlay on every available surface, heralding in itself every era from Grecian to Spanish. At the end of the walk was a raised dais set forty feet off from where he was stopped. A set of three throne chairs with the golden accents of the hegemonic Mother waited atop it.

In them a trinity of black robed men sat watching him, beyond them guards to each side.

Abandoned in the center of the room, the sole focus of the silent audience and its masters, Carlisle swallowed and licked his lips. Before he could frame any words to open his mouth, the man in the center chair, black hair and finger tips pressed together, had crossed the space between and appeared right before him. Wide burgundy eyes, whose intense focus lost nothing by their clouds, stared at and in and through him unblinking.

"Delightful."

The word slithered out of the older vampire enraptured, as one of his hands stroked the flawlessly white cravat which seemed cheap and dingy in comparison to the skin it encircled. The breathless room seemed to sigh and shift even in the soundlessness as he then held out his hand, smiling.

Carlisle placed his hand in the man's, confused and confusion only intensified as the man's pristine stone face dipped into subtle disappointment and he shook his head. His hand was drawn upward and toward the man, whose black robe split to display golden finery hidden beneath. The touch refined and claiming, spiderlike fingers in smooth onion skin coiling around him.

"You should never have been left alone so long. Such an egregious error to be rectified." He continued on unwaiting for response from the man who's hand he held, the same space of speaking breath containing "Caius. Marcus." as though the names were summons. The men rising in graceful unison as he continued on. "It is as I said it would be."  
They moved in a slower gait than their first, dutiful and beautiful, as though they floated instead of walked. The gold of their under outfits flashing from the slits of black robes as they strode toward the two in the middle of the floor at such an even, perfectly matched, footing.

"Are you certain, Aro?" The question came from the one of two who had long jet hair same as the first, but his expression was deep set when Carlisle looked up to find the second voice to break the silence held by dozens. A removed inconstancy and carelessness set into his features which seemed to say he cared nothing at all for anything he looked at.

The second, with his long white hair, paler even that than the pallor of his skin, said nothing but watched with astute focus between the three. Eyes never more than the breath of a millisecond resting on the man in question.

Aro turned first, with a flourish, to hold his hand out to his compatriots. His smile only greater for the questioning as though even that only cemented whatever unknown proclamation they discussed before him – of him.

"How could it be anything less than-" The milky burgundy eyes of Aro once turned toward his peers now shifted back to Carlisle again. Circumnavigated the expanse from the shoulders of his ragged traveling clothes, to his eyes, to the top of his blonde head with supernatural speed. "-golden?"


	2. Onomastic Nomenclatore

**Chapter 2: **

**Onomastic Nomenclatore **

He is not like them, it shows in every glance of them, and yet he is prodigal to them from his step inside.

Gathered into arms like a child gone lost. Clothed in silks and slippers. Given chambers that could house families and support villages. Questions answered promptly, with pomp and circumstances and the affection afforded a beloved relative. He is given tours through which every door he might spy is flung wide for him, at the smallest glance of his sudden benefactor.

There are smiles of adamant amusement and even obvious, yet restrainedly respectful, envy shown his way. He is special beyond their special, somehow, and given free reign. In return begin the subtle whispers of an endless Night Court. He is called the _piccolo cardellino_ and in certain cases, bold beyond blondness, he is called _Aro's piccolo cardellino_ specifically.

Though he has begun to pick up words and phrases and some Italian itself with a language book lent, along with a smattering of the concurrent mixture of Spanish being spoken in Volterra itself, he does not know these and is left asking.

Aro's look at the mangled syllables of the words Carlisle gives him is neither shock nor quite not incredulous amusement, as though perhaps he has been waiting or is surprised to some dark delight at the demand for self-knowledge.

"Little goldfinch," he says, self-satisfied, still reclining in a chaise in one of the back rooms were the public can not come. "Can you figure the rest out for yourself?"

Sounding properly insulted and a little horrified, without a pause to keep the words to himself, Carlisle replied. "They've decided I'm your pet."

There is something in the way Aro smiled, as he sat up and then rose from his seat finally, strolling toward Carlisle at the balcony as graceful and space filling as he did before his court or the smallest guest. Something further amused and yet captured only in the startling red of his eyes and the graceful movement of his hand evocating upward as though to a passing creature.

"They are British by nature and birth, yet they migrate through Europe. With most frequency the males, and, though, usually only as far as Spain or France, there are still the strays which blow with the wind all the way to our lands. And, of course-"

Aro stopped at his side, hand still aloft, and reaching out to trace a circle around Carlisle's face only half an inch from his fingertip actually touching the man's skin. "There is the fact that you are quite stunning." The smallest hundredth of a millisecond. "Such a purely striking color."

The hand fell away and Aro looked out on the empty open forum without pause to Carlisle's multifaceted reactions.

"You are still so new in comparison to all but the children, and it gives them cause for excitement." That gaze turned to rest on him, as he had flipped to rest against rail like it were a wall meant for support, leaned close in supplication with such wide, red-grey eyes. "You will forgive them for being so unsettled by it."

Where Carlisle found the ability to speak was beyond him, especially the words that came.

"They are not the only ones."

Aro pulled back, a hand raising, so a finger stroked his own temple and cheek, the heel of his hand free from even touching his cheek. The expression was sharply uncertain, only despairingly displeased for a flicker before it slipped far deeper into suspicious precision on the face in question.

"Have I given you any reason to feel less than welcome?"

Carlisle swallowed, a human response like so many other tiny shards of them that everyone here lacked. "No, of course not. It is-"

"Then do not fear for anything." Aro's voice overrode his, with a devastatingly wide smile, one hand remaining on the balcony and the other coming to rest on Carlisle's shoulder, next to the neck of his bright jacket's collar. "Not one of them will clip your wings and steal your freedom, _piccolo cardellino_."


	3. The Differential Method

**Chapter 3: **

**The Differential Method **

"I'd like to accompany you."

The voice came without an entrance. Aro standing in the opening of a curtain while Carlisle suddenly grasped the menial clothing he was changing into instead to his chest as though in warding, his figure and face gone rigid at the combined announcement and appearance.

Before that blankness could collect itself, Aro glided further into the room. A new suit of purple with golden inlay accents under it. "I have yet to ask anything of you, and it is so little. I will not withhold you from your purpose. I mean only to observe, to be as you have been for me, a companion in this brand new time, if you will let me."

"I know that it isn't to your taste." He's seen the way they look at him when he slinks off to do his deed, to feed away from them, and he's heard the screams, and smelled the people who come through following other vampires, not to mention, he has spotted one or two already in passing more than once in these labyrinth halls that seem not to be in either category.

"Do you deign to dictate what is or isn't in my taste without asking?" Aro asked, with a tighter circumspectness. Only pausing to let Carlisle's expression make a show of hesitation, he continued onward, with a gratified gesture of his hand. "Let me come and decide for myself upon proofs and not assumptions."

His hands, as well as his eyes, were on the clothes clutched to him as he spoke. "I could not stop you."

"You could. You have only to say the words and I will leave you to your pursuit alone. Perhaps," Aro stopped with a faint pacing step back and forth, almost rocking, near the curtain again. "I should not have intruded. I will wait outside until you have finished preparing and you may give your answer then."

By the time the words had faded, and Carlisle's eyes had lifted, bewilderment brightest in the black-shot gold, the space Aro had been standing in was already emptied of any presence except the shivering of the curtain as though in an unseen breeze.

* * *

The brush broke way, and feet of all sizes scrambled the further in he went, the heart beats of millions sung in his ears, smaller and larger, faster and slower, each specified to its own design and something he knew better than anything he had yet to teach himself since the first rat he tore into with his bare hands in the cruel defeat which manifested his singular destiny and victory.

But he only focused on one.

She was running in front of him, fleet and slim, the exercise of this spring new spring showed in her steps. She was childless and hobbled from a fall somewhere, the weakest of her herd, and it was only her panic, only her desperate will to live – live, escape, run beat her heart fiercely – made this a chase.

But he had her scent and the sound of her footsteps lead him like men before water and fire and God.

They were not only footsteps in the forest. He had all but forgotten in the thirst, in plunge through thicket and past the twin trees, slamming into her with the force that broke a leg and shattered her rib cage on impact, when the blood, both spicy and bland coursed down his throat, and a twig snapped at the edge of the space he is in.

The snarl was instantaneous. This was his kill, his feast. He would not share or be stolen from.

And it was only in looking up, as the blood went down, down, down, down, flushing through his system, his limbs, that his eyes found the one watching him.

Dark eyes, vibrant scarlet even in pitch dark of a new moon, and a hand throw out clenching almost through the limb of a tree. Oh, not a twig. No, not a twig. A snapped branch in one hand. Erect and rigid in perfect stillness that even buildings cannot hope to emulate with perfect symmetry in their flaw of being made by man. Everything, except that face, a riot of the most subtle nuances, and that face, those eyes, gored into only his own.

The blood was still hot and somehow froze in his mouth at once.

Ashes of intention climaxing within the space of milliseconds, before he shoved the carcass away, hands clenching on air, as he rose, swallowing, tongue circumnavigating his mouth and his teeth and the stickiness left on them. The world between the two of them laid bare on embarrassments and shamed willfulness and pure survival.

It stayed unchanging, that face that watched him crouched beside the fallen doe.

Then Aro moved finally. His hand releasing the tree which swayed indelicately as the branch fell.

Carlisle shirked back as the elder vampire walked toward him, aware that his choice, his only one, was a mockery of the life that now freely embraced him. But Aro stopped on the opposite side of the creature, reaching slowly up toward his breast. Carlisle cringed in preparation for what he had known would come from the moment he had admitted the rumors were true.

When he opened his eyes, Aro had pulled forth a handkerchief from his breast pocket and held it aloft.

The detailing matching perfectly, in lace and stitching, to his cravat and the purple jacket.

Carlisle stared at the hand, aware of the blood around his lips, dribbled across his chin. That he had waited days past when he should have gone, not wanting to draw too much attention to his alien habits. He rose, very slowly, animalistic edges and wild gold flattering his body as much as his eyes against the darkness.

His hand came out, without a tremble and yet hesitant, when his fingers touched the offering before him.

His mind seeming to have changed in the last second, Aro's hand did not release the handkerchief, but instead he used its leverage to pull himself and Carlisle toward each other. His hand rising to wrap around the side of the man's head so that his mouth landed securely against Carlisle's.

Perhaps, it was shock. Perhaps, it was surprise. Aro's touch and intent were both deft. The glide of those fingers into his hair, skimming the shell of an ear, which secured him from retreat. The texture of lips which met and then flared, followed by that of a tongue which traced his own and the extent of his mouth.

Until just as suddenly, Aro pulled back, the tip of his tongue worrying the center of his top lip. Then, he reached up to wipe clean the smear of blood that had transferred on to his skin. Without his eyes finding the blood on his finger or Carlisle's stunned expression, he dipped it into his mouth as he finally looked to the younger vampire.

Clean now, he said simply as he stepped away, "I had wondered how it would taste."

Between the sound of the deer's rapidly failing heart beat and Aro's footsteps then walking away, Carlisle was left thrall to what Aro had not specified – whether he had meant the deer, or himself, or his finalized opinion.


End file.
